Intellectually speaking...

Here are two startling ideas that you have probably not hear before:

• There is a strong anti-intellectual streak running through the American collective psyche.



• Republicans/Conservatives benefit from this tendency.

But then we have Matt Stoller announcing (MyDD :: Needed: A Line in the Sand on Iraq) the demise of the conservatism, as an intellectual brand:

Obama, who is more and more staking out progressive territory (not boldly, but he is going there), is appealing to a group of independent voters that are increasingly sympathetic to liberalism. This makes sense. Conservatism has died, intellectually speaking. After watching New Orleans in tatters, Iraq in flames, and a government engulfed in corruption, the Republican brand is gone. And yet the Democratic brand, while slightly improved, is not sparkling with dynamism.

What are we to make of these claims? Conservatism (in its personification as the Republican Party) suffered an electoral defeat. Is this an intellectual defeat or a political one? If the 2006 election results were indeed a signal that government is a necessary and positive element in societal progress, then it would follow that the conservative demonizing of it has finally been challenged and rejected. This is however, at best an optimistic conclusion. It is far more parsimonious to conclude that the people, especially independents, did not intend any sort of ideological message in their recent choice, but merely their mild discontent with the most excessive acts of the Bush administration (and the GOP). A quick glance at PollingReports will assuage any worries the right might entertain that "independents" are anything more than those who sit in the middle of an already right-centered narrow range of differences between Democrats and Republicans.



The truth (at least the more justifiable version of it) is that the Democratic Party and liberalism have been intellectually dead for a few decades now. While the party continues to shuffle the deck chairs of populism, fickle labor support and a Dixiecrat legacy, the party faithful and their commanders are divided between DLC triangulators and "netroots" tacticians. If indeed there is an anti-intellectual streak running through the populace, it should be no suprise, in such an atmosphere of retreat from principles. The liberals have nothing to offer. Intellectually speaking.

Screaming progress

One might as well say that in the land of the blind, the few one-eyed humans are unseen. So we have the constant replay of ahistorical analysis such as the below offering a generalization from the personal (Rudy Giuliani: "I Disagree with Myself on Some Days." | The Huffington Post):

It's often been said that Rudy Giuliani was one of the heroes of 9/11. Fine. I, too, joined the rest of the country in raising Giuliani on our collective shoulders in the days after 9/11. However, I've grown increasingly uncomfortable with the "Rudy-the-Hero" industry ever since. And here's why: When Mayor Giuliani remained in downtown Manhattan after the first tower fell, when he ran toward the fire, instead of away from it, when he ran toward the victims, when he embraced the city in the hours, days, and weeks following that tragic day, did he go beyond the call of duty? Or is that kind of leadership actually, simply, the call of duty?



We seem to be so accustomed to our politicians running away from danger, so used to our elected officials following polls instead their hearts and minds, that we fall all over ourselves the minute one of them does what we hope and vote for, the minute one of our leaders actually leads. On 9/11, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani did a stunning job as a leader on a day that we were screaming for one. But, we're still screaming for one.

Seitzman's "we" would be so much more comforting if it extended to instances other than when he wants us to share responsibility for his error. Fortunately, Seitzman is surrounded by similar reformed leftists that he can remain blissfully unaware of the marginal left that has known the fraud that was Guiliani and the silliness of the idea that someone barely performing his job is a "hero".



We, the marginal left that is, shall now patiently await Seitzman's realization, no doubt upcoming in a year or two, that on 9/11 Giuliani did no "stunning job" but instead significantly worsened the situation. We, the marginal left that is, are not screaming for leaders. We would settle for not having all you newly reformed leftists not scream at our leaders. You know, like you used to when you were centrists, moderates, conservatives, whatever!

Big fat smear

In keeping with their slick approach to left activism, the Net Turks spend a lot of their e-life worrying about the money. Who raised what, whom did they give it to... that sort of thing. So Kos tallies up what Democratic incumbents gave to the DSCC (Daily Kos: Senate spending, 2006) and figures, while at it, why not take a pot shot at Kucinich, only to realize that his haste got the better of him:

To round out the numbers for the presidentials, Obama gave a paltry $150K, Biden $200K, Dodd $200K, and Kucinich a big fat $0. [Update]: My bad -- I missed that Kucinich gave $125K.

Meet the Old Dems

The centrist left ("progressives") that is the vanguard of the current Internet-based activism is no braver than when raining insults on those to their left. Mimicking their own treatment by the right, they resort to smear and false analysis when confronted by a more principled position. One of their magical beliefs is the idea that the Democrats (especially the new ones, the ones they supported) are not only a significant change in the right direction, but are the only vehicle for such a change. Matt Taibbi (AlterNet: Unhinged Republicans Can't Even Get Their Insults Straight) provides a bit of Dem history on Alternet that will no doubt fail to penetrate the echo chamber:

In the two years of the 109th congress, the Republicans allowed only one completely open rule. This was a reflection of a decades-long general evolution in congressional procedure away from bipartisanship and in the direction of unilateralism. The trend really began with the Democrats -- in 1977, when the Democrats were the majority party, eighty-five percent of all bills went to the floor as open rules. By 1994, when the Democrats were kicked out of power, that number had dropped to thirty percent. Particularly during the Reagan years, congressional Democrats had turned the House floor into something of a bully pulpit.

Con science

A common error among English speakers is to confuse the words "conscious" and "conscience". Allan Hunt Badiner attempts not mere confusion, but complete indoctrination of the unconscious, on AlterNet (AlterNet: Can Barack Obama Become President?), in supporting Obama, a man who has excelled more at making a science out of conning, than exhibited a conscience. Writes Badiner:

With the campaign's starting gun only just fired, Obama is already perceived as a powerful threat to Hillary Clinton's well-funded political juggernaut and John Edwards' carefully planned strategies, and has emerged as the presumptive speaker for the conscience of the country in the 2008 presidential sweepstakes.



Many are excited just to be passionate again about a presidential campaign, even if it turns out be the classic brief dance of an underdog.

While Obama employs his silvery tongue to con the masses, Badiner resorts to the simpler right-wing tactic of brazen assertion: offer a falsehood boldly without attempting substantiation, in the hope that it will then be perceived as patently true. So we have Edwards' using a "planned strategy" while Obama speaks from the heart and to the conscience. Thus a leap of truth is accomplished over the trivial facts of Obama's recent pandering to the AIPAC, his vapid "bipartisan" rhetoric (why be partisans of truth and progress?). And if you bought that bit and continued, then surely you will be able to ingest, without choking, the notion that Obama (or his campaign) is an underdog. The underdog who, according to Badiner raised $1.3 million, not from the grassroots but:

Even sitting presidents can't always raise the $1.3 million taken in by the Obama campaign during a single fundraising event in Los Angeles on Feb. 20 sponsored by Hollywood moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeff Katzenberg and David Geffen.

And if one right-wing technique works, why not try another highly successful one? Racist and class stereotypes:

For many, Sen. Obama represents a modern and positive image of blackness. He is a worldly, well-educated man married to a well-educated professional black woman.

A masterstroke of a simultaneous insult to black and poor people, and yet another simple outrageous claim: that the non-representative Obama is the best representative of his group; and if they do not do well in a match-up against him, well it's their "image" that is to blame. We suppose. And as the use of right-wing technique might intimate, the climax, the final attack, that all this is preparing the reader for is an attack not on conservatives and religious nuts (the latter criticism could apply to Obama after all), but "intractable liberals":

A sizable percentage of the progressive sector may not be happy with any candidate who does not agree with them on every issue. They have already shown a surprising lack of concern for the political and practical consequences of their inflexibility. The following that Dennis Kucinich, and Ralph Nader enjoyed are cases in point. Intractable liberal voters are like window shoppers who feel most comfortable going home empty-handed and later whining that they couldn't find something they liked. They may have been as responsible for reelecting Bush as his hard-core conservative base.

Has America under George W. Bush dropped into an abyss of moral and economic bankruptcy? Sadly, this is what our nation now represents to the rest of the world. Perhaps the most groundbreaking aspect of an Obama presidency would be the message it sends globally: The post-Bush era of American governance has arrived.

For someone interested purely in effect issues (e.g: Iraq War) it might be unintelligible that a sizable percentage of progressives may not be happy with a candidate who does not agree with fundamental progressive principles. So it is these "intractable liberals", who support Nader and Kucinich, who are to blame for the poor showing of Gore and Kerry. This despite the lack of a Nader "threat" in 2004 and the simple fact that Kucinich is a candidate for the Democratic primaries, not the presidential election.

The "intractable liberals", that Badiner whines about, that support Nader and Kucinich are anything but "window-shoppers" or "whiners". Both leaders and a large part of their supporters have worked hard and without egregious compromises to create and sustain an unlikely and impossible movement. They were in the front-lines of the protest against the Iraq war (as a matter of principle) while the "tractable" liberals where deriding such protest or actively supporting the war. They (principled leftists) are aware of the difficulties of furthering their agenda, and that even the smallest successes are hard won. Those are the lessons learned from the history of left activism. They are in it for the long run, not "to win it" as Badiner and his kind are. If Badiner is looking for examples of "whining", he needs no more than a mirror -- as the passage above demonstrates: "Wah-wah ... intractable liberals are so inflexible. They won't let my posterboy win".

Badiner also adopts the fine tradition of the American right in considering the rest of the world a bunch of fools, or perhaps he presumes that they are no smarter than he is, and might choose to drink the Obama Kool Aid. Surely Palestinians will celebrate the coming humanism of American action after Obama's coronation, based on his stirring speech at the AIPAC?

Churchill, Bush and Memory

Offering (for substantiation?) pictures of Churchill (who looks simultaneously constipated and impatiently in wait for his turn at the loo) and our boy Dubya, Shakespeare's Sister offers a link (Shakespeare's Sister: Smackdown) to a Carpetbagger Report post mocking young George for comparing himself to Winston Churchill. One supposes that the photograph of the constipated Churchill is intended to recall the mythical nature of the man, if at all white people need further reassurance of his towering status in their collective memory. If 9/11 is the event around which modern mythology is built (an immediate example is the "leadership" of "America's Mayor" Giuliani, a myth that this very "netroots" is unwilling to adopt), World War II is the equivalent for the recently aware -- those who are obsessed with making history than learning it.

The less fortunate who had to live that history (much as their modern contemporaries of "Giuliani Time") might remember a different man. And what they recall might substantiate Dubya's fantasy, albeit in an unflattering light. The similarities between the man who held that one should feel no queasiness in gassing "uncivilised tribes" (Iraq) and the fool who went back there looking for some (chemical weapons) can be summarized by that one nation-destroying adventure. But why stop? John Lukacs (Boston Globe) introduces us to Churchill thus (while still subscribing to the myth of the man):

Winston Churchill had a very long political career. Until the 65th year of his life (1939) he had few successes and many failures.

The similarities start there and follow fast and furious. Here is the early life of young Winston (source: History Learning Site):

Winston Churchill was born in 1874 into a wealthy and famous family. His father was Lord Randolph Churchill and he was the grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. He was schooled at Harrow where it is said that he only put his name on the exam entrance paper to get in.

A conservative "Liberal" (at a time when the "free market" was still a liberal idea), his actions against workers and his use of the military offer examples of parallel malignancy:

As Home Secretary, Winston Churchill used troops to maintain law and order during a miners strike in South Wales. He also used a detachment of Scots Guards to assist police during a house siege in Sidney Street in East London in January 1911. Whilst such actions may have marked him down as a man who would do his utmost to maintain law and order, there were those who criticised his use of the military for issues that the police usually dealt with.

As one struggles now with the failed project for a new American Empire ("spread democracy through the middle east"), the other struggled almost 80 years ago to keep together a crumbling old one (The idea of independence, or even self-government, for India, "fantastic ... criminally mischievous"). And keep it together at any and all costs, employing surprisingly similar rhetoric: [Without the British] "India will fall back quite rapidly through the centuries into the barbarism and privations of the Middle ages".

As the agents behind Bush stoked civil unrest between rival religion factions, so did his white colonialist ancestor, who approvingly encouraged Muslim-Hindu tension, astutely gathering that "that is all to the good". That Bush is largely illiterate saves him the honour of such a record as Churchill's "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion". And if Bush's fellow conservatives question the intelligence of Katrina victims (black) or the growth of minority populations (Hispanic), no doubt they derive inspiration from Churchill's analysis of the Bengal famine victims: "Indians breeding like rabbits".

Winston Churchill was defeated by a person he described as a "half-naked fakir", a pacifist and humanist who wrote that "we must become the change we want to see in the world". It may be futile to expect today's "progressives", who consider such notions "New Age pap", to therefore heed such advice: why "become" when you have already arrived?

Elites and eLites

Back in 1995, when every "user" with a borrowed IP stack on his POS Windows toy had finally got on the "web", laying down the ground for such horrors as webmail, MySpace and yes blogging, there was already a bunch of snake oil salesmen waiting for these innocent hordes. The trick was trivial: add an "e" to any old world business and you got the New Economy. eToys. eTrade. ePinion?! So now meet the new media criticizing the old media (MyDD :: Low Information Elites and Fox News):

If you're a policymaker, or if you pay attention to elite discourse such as that in the New York Times while living in a high information culture, it's easy to ignore television and/or cable news. even easier to pretend that the televised propaganda coming at most Americans every day isn't important or relevant, or even that it does not exist.

[...] Fox News is a partisan Republican outlet, as opposed to MSNBC or CNN which aren't, even though they have mostly partisan shows hosted by Tucker Carlson, Joe Scarborough, and Glenn Beck. It's not that these low information elites particularly like or respect cable news, it's that the marginal difference between cable news channels are not necessarily noticeable. [...]

Anyway, one specific way that bloggers and activists differ from elites in the party is that we notice and take Fox News and the right-wing radio circuit seriously as a part of public discourse. We believe that people watch and listen to these outlets, and believe what these outlets say. We recognize these outlets as affirmative carriers of diseased misinformation, not as market suppliers for a conservative public. Roger Ailes and Fox News aren't just an inevitable part of the news environment; they are adversaries, as much as Mitch McConnell if not more so. They are powerful purveyors of Republican propaganda, but it's both possible and important to damage their capacity to deliver information to the public branded as newsworthy. Even if journalists refuse to distinguish between what they do and what Fox News does, we believe that this distinction is important.

Low information elites don't see any of this. They haven't been educated as to the purpose of Fox News, and often believe that the public can simply see through Fox News or any of the other cable news channels. After all, it's obvious to these elites what is and isn't true, because they have access to the newsmakers or elite information streams themselves. Many of them hope to get onto Fox News, because they don't realize that Democrats don't gain from going on a Republican propaganda outlet. They do not distinguish between Fox News and MSNBC, and they do not understand why and how right-wing media works. There's just a lot less media and communications literacy among these low information elites than there is among bloggers and activists, mostly because we are at the receiving end of the propaganda and being insulted, lied to, marginalized and then blamed for the poor state of the party and the country gets old after awhile.

Well played! There is one unsettling thing... were we to substitute Fox News, right-wing media etc with the "netroots", "information" with "principles" or "truth", "Republican" with "centrist e-activists" (eLites?), the result is... well, unsettling:

If you are a principled politician, if you pay attention to honest and logical discourse such as that in intelligent times while living in a humanist culture, it's easy to ignore blogs. It's even easier to pretend that the blog smearfest coming at online leftists every day isn't important or relevant.

But many within the real left are unaware of the full online environment. They don't for instance get that the "netroots" is a partisan centre of left outlet (literally an outlet for any real rage at the state of things, the sort of rage that demands truth and principles, not simply tactics).

One way that the principled can differ from eLites in the party is that we can notice and take the "netroots" circuit seriously. We can recognize that these outlets as affirmative carriers of diseased lack of information. They are powerful purveyors of centrist ("gradualist") Obama-esque propaganda.

Naive principled leftists do not see any of this. They haven't been "educated" as to the purpose of the "netroots" and often believe that the public can simply see through the tactics and smear, for its obvious what is and isn't principled, rational and true. We, the principled left, should know because we are at the receiving end of the propaganda and being insulted, lied to, marginalized and then blamed ("Nader cost us 2000") for the poor state of the party and the country.

I exaggerate. These are well meaning young people, but they do fail to see how important even the little of the analogy that is applicable to them is. And as long as they live in an internally focused self-sustaining echo chamber they will continue to hurl insults at Nader or Kucinich or Chomsky rather than learn from them.

Or else ... like do something tough

Some may be stuck in the embarrassing language of New Age pap, but not so the literary giants at DailyKos who can dish out such sophisticated bromides as "[the troops are] in harm's way" in a peice that threatens dire consequences for the Democrats if they do not get us out of Iraq (AlterNet: War on Iraq: Democrats: Work to Get Us Out of Iraq ... or Else!):

We do not know what the next year will bring, but we know how to start getting where we know the endgame of Iraq will eventually go, and the most essential task we currently have to to ensure that no more lives than necessary go towards the political cowardice of the current institutionalized quagmire.

Now that's the sort of sentence (perhaps along with "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities") that probably gives his colleague MissLaura a hard-on. But this is not just about impressive rhetoric; there is a deadline attached to the threat:

There are no more acceptable six month windows to see if the same "plan", called a different name, will produce different results.

Impressive, especially in light of the approval elsewhere in the "netroots" of the latest Democratic proposal on Iraq, this one calling for some sort of withdrawal in 2008 (yes that's an at the end of those digits). Fortunately there is raw fury elsewhere:

You have no idea how much raw fury there is out there, just under the surface. And all the "Democratic apologists" like me are on our very last ounce of patience, and all the grassroots supporters have torches lit and and at the ready, and all the Democrats and Republicans in your district are watching to see whether you're really different from the Republicans or not...

You mean... no... you couldn't... you mean, like Nader said?

Marginal hate

It's good news all around on the "netroots" front! Referring to recent polls, Chris Bowers writes (MyDD :: Two New National Polls):

[I]t is heartening to see that nearly half of all respondents refused to refuse to support any of the candidates during the primary season. And what's up with the marginal candidates having so many haters?

Why the puzzlement? Why not celebrate both effects as victories for the "netroots"? On the one hand, 50% support for anyone (which is a pack led by the likes of Clinton and Obama) endorses the

"[almost] any Democrat will do" gradualism. At the same time, the effort to marginalize and denigrate principled candidates ("trophy candidate", "height becomes relevant", "New Age pap") can be claimed to be yielding payoffs based on the second finding (haters for marginal candidates). This is no time to rest on laurels -- work remains for only 11% of respondents hate Kucinich, as opposed to 100% of the "netroots"! The people, as is their ignorant wont, trail the leaders significantly.

Progressive propaganda machine

Sometimes progressives say the darndest things! DarkSyde laments the power of the right-wing propaganda machine (Daily Kos: Chuckle With Charley) but ends on the positive note that we might be able to use our correspondence to reality to build our own propaganda:

The reason right-wing propaganda is so effective is because they've built up an interlocking network of think-tanks, media venues, and grassroots political organizations -- some of the latter in the guise of legitimate, mainstream churches. The think-tanks take ideas that would normally be considered revolting if presented in the nude (Take from the poorest and give to the richest) and craft it into appealing, clever sounding deceptions (It will stimulate the economy and help the poor!). Right-wing media spreads the deception, nurtures racism, and demonizes opposition (Liberals want to give your tax dollars to welfare queens!). Wingnut clerics dress it up in pleasant sounding bits of religious doctrine and beat it mercilessly into the heads of their congregations week after week. It’s a seamless, well-oiled, machine.



But there's a chance progressives can build something similar, and we do enjoy one advantage: We don't have to create and constantly reinforce a high-maintenance pseudo-reality that ends up killing people or ruining lives.

Judging by the demonizing of the opposition (and by opposition I obviously mean the leftist types like Nader and Kucinich, who are after all far more reality based) that is already underway in the progressive blogs, this is a project slated for success.

Obama's heavy stones

As everyone aspiring to high elected office has to, Obama went to AIPAC to kiss some ass, but fortunately TPM and MyDD see his performance as not bad at all (Text of the Obama Speech at AIPAC today | TPMCafe). The speech continues the usual meaningless rhetoric that is Obama's signature:

It won't be easy. Some of those stones will be heavy and tough for the United States to carry. Others with be heavy and tough for Israel to carry. And even more will be difficult for the world. But together, we will begin again.

The only thing I can think of doing "together" with Obama is not having a "conversation" with Hillary. But if Obama decided to leave his stones at AIPAC, he sure was right that they are some heavy ones. Here are some of the top hits:

But I am also fortunate to have seen Israel from the air.

On my journey that January day, I flew on an IDF helicopter to the border zone. The helicopter took us over the most troubled and dangerous areas and that narrow strip between the West Bank and the Mediterranean Sea. At that height, I could see the hills and the terrain that generations have walked across. I could truly see how close everything is and why peace through security is the only way for Israel.

Our helicopter landed in the town of Kiryat Shmona on the border. What struck me first about the village was how familiar it looked. The houses and streets looked like ones you might find in a suburb in America. I could imagine young children riding their bikes down the streets. I could imagine the sounds of their joyful play just like my own daughters. There were cars in the driveway. The shrubs were trimmed. The families were living their lives.

Then, I saw a house that had been hit with one of Hezbollah's Katyusha rockets.

I suspect that I have quoted too much and risked losing you as you collapse in a mixture of laughter and tears of incredulity. Perhaps you are wondering if Obama got to see some of the Palestinians in refugee camps and in the bantustans that Israel has created. Or you may be curious as to whether Obama managed to score any civilian hits -- he was in an IDF helicopter after all. Maybe the IDF helicopter even strayed into Lebanese territory, as the Israelis accidentally do every now and then, giving Old Stones Obama a look at the territory from where the dastardly Katyusha rockets were launched. In passing I will also note our silver tongued wunderkind's turn of phrase in aid of upturning the truth: "peace through security" is his prescription to complement Israel's unwillingness to achieve it's much desired security, through peace. Do not let your mind wander far though, for there is more:

It is important to remember this history—that Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from Lebanon only to have Iran supply Hezbollah with thousands of rockets.

Ah yes, history lessons. Obama's hyper-religiousness (I presume), which usually includes magical beliefs about the origin of things, permits him to visualise an arbitrary starting point for history: the withdrawal of Israel from Lebanon. That Israel "withdrew" might clue a less self-certain person to what Israel did to require its withdrawal, but such mere facts are no match for the verbal footwork of Obama's "unilateral withdrawal". The facts of the recent Israeli terrorist strikes against Lebanon, killing and displacing thousands of civilians, before it had to once again "withdraw" its laughably vaunted troops -- those facts too might give pause to those lacking the heavy stones. Obama, made of sterner stuff, marches on:

That effort begins with a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel: our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy.

It is fortunate for Obama that his history starts with Israel's "withdrawal" from Lebanon, for that absolves him of pondering about democracies in the region, such as the elected government of Mossadegh in Iran, which we toppled.

Perhaps the best measure of progress (for progressives) is how we treat (or let others in power treat) the most disadvantaged members of the human population -- such as the Palestinians. By that measure, support of individuals like Obama is one of the most regressive acts we can indulge in.

The appropriate use of "faggot"

From the "he didn't just put it that way, did he?" department we have Matt Stoller (MyDD :: Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics) outraged by Coulter referring to Edwards as a "faggot". The thing that seems to bother Stoller is that Coulter called Edwards a "faggot":

Anyway, one thing to keep in mind, aside from the conservative uncoolness, is that she called a major Democratic candidate a faggot. Ok, she's an entertainer, so whatever. But keep in mind that prior to her appearance, most major Republican Presidential candidates appeared on the stage to make appeals to the audience. I wonder if they support Coulter's statement. Do they think it's appropriate to call John Edwards a faggot?

Well, this raises the question of whether Stoller thinks it is appropriate to call anyone (including a gay person) a faggot? Whether the person is a major Democratic candidate is irrelevant. The issue here is not what Edwards was called, but that someone used the term "faggot". Surely Stoller can see that?

The irresponsibility of people

As he unleashed dictatorial terror in Chile, Kissinger remarked that he didn't see why "we should have to stand by and let a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people". Kissinger was no liberal, but it is not difficult to find eager proponents among liberals of the idea of limiting the options available to the people, as evidenced by the character assassination of Dennis Kucinich by elements of the "netroots" (see entries in this blog for examples). Speaking about a Marine pilot who wrote with perverse glee at the killing of civilians in Iraq, Matt Taibbi (AlterNet: Why Can't We Talk about Peace in Public?) writes:

I believe that Marine pilot is driven by the same forces that render the presidential candidacy of someone like Dennis Kucinich impossible in America. A country that feeds itself through the manufacture of war technology is bound to view peace, nonviolence and mercy as seditious concepts. It will create policies first and then people to fit its machines, finding wars to fight and creating killers to fight them. If that's true of us, and I think it is, our troubles won't be over even if someone brings the Iraq war to an end. We'll be treating the symptom and not the disease. And the reason our elections are a sham is that the disease is never on the table. Excepting the occasional Kucinich, no one in either party is interested in trying to change who we are, no matter how sick we become.

The "new progressives" may not find Kucinich's ideas of peace seditious, but they are on record with the more amusing claim that these ideas are "New Age pap". The Iraq war and winning elections, and setting the right "frame" in pursuit of these goals, are the limits of this new pragmatism, and what is good for the goose should suffice for the people.

Center of left

The term "progressive", it appears, commits one to a constant fear of the past. In particular one's forerunners: patricide is the easy path to the throne! Matt Stoller, worried about the "netroots" report card from the CBC (MyDD :: Fox News and the CBC) reacts with the tried and tested "It wasn't us! It was the old progressives!":

[P]eople like Amy Sullivan talk about the religious left and the need to reach out to 'values voters' as if black churches have not been an important backbone of progressive politics for fifty years. The CBC doesn't recognize that the netroots are not actually the old progressive movement. We are new, and much more open to collaboration and working together with a newly energized African-American political progressive movement.

The indignation is premature. Indeed black churches have been an important backbone of progressive politics. And it has not only historically collaborated with liberal elements (such as in the Northeast) -- including our current favourite nemesis Joe Leiberman -- but also reached across history (and geography) to tap into and draw inspiration from the deep humanism of other leftists/progressives (one example is Martin Luther King's encounter with the thoughts and legacy of Gandhi, who in turn applied some of the ideas of Thoreau). There is a strong and continuous thread running through the history of humanist leftism, arguably the only one that has produced sustainable results.



The "old progressives" were neither ignorant nor uninterested in this history and this association. To the contrary, it is that shared humanism that enabled the collaboration between them. It is (or should be) hence unsurprising that an "End of History" attitude arouses suspicion, especially when accompanied by intolerance and disrespect.

Meanwhile, I hope that progressive African-American leaders begin to recognize that the progressive white world is not monolithic, and that there are real allies here who are trying to figure out a way to deal in good faith with those with whom our interests are aligned.

Alignment of interests serves short-term interests (and there is nothing necessarily wrong with that). Left movements are built on alignment of principles. And in that sense, the "progressive white world", monolithic or not, may become irrelevant in the future to the progressive world, judging by growing leftist groundswell in the so-called "third world".



The difference between the "old progressives" and the new "netroots" is spelled out wittily by Bitch|Lab (Flicked Off) who quotes Alternet / In These Times:

Yet when it comes to issues of diversity, A-list bloggers like Moulitsas and Stoller can get defensive, and at times, dismissive. “Take a look at what you have today. Take a look at the folks who’re leading the party, dominating the media, or even within corporations. Do you think the top ranks of any of those institutions is any more representative?” responds Stoller, his voice rising in indignation.



[...]



In his [Markos Moulitsas] view, it’s simply absurd to demand what he sarcastically describes as an “affirmative action of ideas” within an inherently meritocratic medium such as the blogosphere: “I don’t see how you can say, ‘Well, let’s give more voice to African American lesbians.’



[...]



As for the relative paucity of top female progressive bloggers, Moulitsas is indifferent: “I haven’t given it a lot of thought. I find it totally uninteresting. What I’m interested in is winning elections, and I don’t give a shit what you look like.”

And Bitch comments:

Of course, but shouldn’t Kos care about that and wonder why? It seems to me to be at the heart of what a more progressive vision of the Democratic party was supposed to be all about. Yes? The paucity may not have to do with lack of talent, as Kos implies, but lack of interest in what women are writing about. Why should women support people who find what we have to say “uninteresting” and not meriting your concern?



[...]



[A] hiearchical system has been forged with Technorati rankings and Blogad networks where members have the right to deny membership. And it comes complete with justifications about natural deservingness that ring hollow to anyone familiar with the vicissitudes of oppression and injustice.

But those aren’t really things people who “just want to win elections” care about. Afterall, elections are very much about accepting procedural justice and equality of opportunity as the sine qua non of politics. It’s a passive politics, an episodic politics. It’s the kind of politics enthusiasts pushing for a more substantive politics rejected as alienating and unresponsive to the desire of people to actively participate in the decision-making processes that affected their lives.

As long as we don’t question the eternal naturalness of a procedurlistic, episodic politics, and forge something new, then there will never be democratic participation, just endless reinstantiations of new hierarchical social relations, new hegemonies which justify the everlasting natural order of it all.